Good Morning Sunshine (8″ x 10″ or 11″ x 14″ print)
When I was growing up, my mom kept a large cupboard full of arts and craft supplies that my brother and I could get into whenever we felt like creating. She would stock it with your typical supplies — paints, glue, markers, pencils, scissors, construction paper, etc. — and any other sorts of cast off materials and objects that might become useful for an afternoon craft project: things like tin cans, empty toilet paper and paper towel rolls, film canisters, frozen orange juice can lids, newspaper, old bowls, rocks…anything that might one day have potential.
Old sheets of packing paper from one of our Navy moves became a favorite of mine. They were big sheets of smooth, white newsprint that were wrinkled and creased from cushioning delicate household items; but despite the flaws, to me, they were simply enormous fields of possibility. I would use whatever paints — poster paint, tempera, watercolor — were in the cupboard, sometimes even crayons or markers, and spent my summer evenings on the cool, cement garage floor impulsively creating big, colorful, abstract paintings.
Citrus Zinnia (8″ x 10″ or 11″ x 14″ print, 12″ x 12″ or 18″ x 18″ canvas)
When I finally had a sizeable collection of works, I’d spread them out around the perimeter of the garage. They were laid on the floor and over boxes and tools — anywhere there was room. Then I set up a small corner reception desk for myself and invited my neighborhood friends (and their friends) to view exhibitions of my paintings. Eventually, my dad offered to purchase everything. I agreed excitedly, and he plunked down the generous sum of five dollars for the entirety of my “Garage Period” paintings.
German Alphabet poster (11″ x 14″)
It’s because I have those memories of that time as a kid, when making art objects was such an enormous source of joy, pride, and purpose, that I become so easily enamored with shops like Children Inspire Design. Rebecca Peragrine, artist/designer/CEO/founder of CID, operates her company with a mission to inspire a sense of global awareness and responsibility. Her words, “Inspire children. Change the world,” speak straight to my heart as a fellow artist/designer with an innate drive to use her creative skills to serve the public good.
The bright colors and stylized representations she uses have an undoubtedly youthful appeal that would look equally at home in children’s rooms and in ”grown-up” rooms that don’t take themselves too seriously (and no room — or grown-up, for that matter – should, in my opinion). And by relying on scraps and leftovers she demonstrates a tremendous knack for the same sort of resourceful creativity that had once been a source of inspiration for a little girl digging for treasure in the art cupboard.
Wild Flowers (8″ x 10″ or 11″ x 14″ print)
“Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air — explode softly — and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth — boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn’t go cheap, either — not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination.” – Robert Fulghum